Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Advertising
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
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Business as Usual
The Effects of Business as Usual
An Office at “Google”
44 4
Businesses which encourage humor
also suggest:
1. Take Risks. 8. Experiment.
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Humor-in-Business Surveys:
• A Robert Hall survey of 100 of the largest
American corporations found that 84 % of
vice presidents and human resource
directors preferred employees with a sense
of humor.
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• A Hodge-Cronin survey polling 737
CEOs of major corporations
concluded that 98 % of
respondents said that humor was
important in the conduct of
business, that most executives did
not have enough humor, and that in
hiring they gave preference to
people with a sense of humor.
(Morreall [2008]: 459)
44 8
Match the Slogans with the Products
• “Athlete’s Foot,” “B. O.” “The beer that made Milwaukee
famous,” “The drink that makes a pause refreshing,” “Good to
the last drop,” “Halitosis,” “Knocks Eczema,” “Natures spelled
backwards,” “Say it with flowers,” “The skin you love to
touch,” “Snap, Crackle and Pop,” “VapoRub,” “When it rains, it
pours,”
44 9
The Staying Power of Brand Names
• “In nineteen of twenty-two categories, the company that owned
the leading American brand in 1925 still has it today. Examples
include:
– Campbells in soup
– Del Monte in canned fruit
– Gillette in razors
– Ivory in soap
– Kellogg’s in breakfast cereals
– Kodak in film
– Nabisco in cookies
– Sherwin Williams in paint
– Singer in sewing machines
– Wrigleys in chewing gum
(Bryson [2009]: 431)
44 10
Common Nouns vs. Proper Nouns
• Many advertisers are so successful that their product names
ordinary words in the language. Ironically, this is because of
their own advertising campaigns:
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Materialism in America
• “If Greece gave the world philosophy, Britain gave drama,
Austria gave music, Germany gave politics, and Italy gave art,
then America has recently contributed mass-produced and
mass-consumed objects.”
• “In all cultures we buy things, steal things, and hoard things.
From time to time, some of us collect vast amounts of things
such as tulip bulbs, paint drippings on canvases, bits of
minerals. Others collect such stuff as thimbles, shoes, even
libraries of videocassettes.”
(Twitchell [2009]: 454-455)
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• “Materialism does not crowd out spiritualism;
spiritualism is more likely a substitute when
objects are scarce. When we have few things,
we make the next world holy. When we have
plenty, we enchant the objects around us.
The hereafter becomes the here and now.”
44 13
The Marketing of the
Sugarplum Fairy and the Nutcracker
• Enid Nemy tells about seven-year-old Mollie Kurshan
who attended “The Nutcracker Suite” at Lincoln
Center and then told her mother:
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Marketing Controls Our Lives
• “Not only are all major museum shows sponsored by corporate
interests, but they all end up in the same spot: the gift shop.”
• “We even know when prices fall: Washington’s birthday, Labor Day,
after Christmas.”
44 15
Brand Names & Car Bumper Marketing
44 17
Subliminal Messages
• People say, “I don’t pay attention to ads. I just tune
them out. They have no effect on me.”
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Products are our friends, and our gods.
• “I once heard an alcoholic joke that Jack Daniels was her most
constant lover.”
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Advertising is a religion
• “Infiniti is an automobile; Hydra Zen is a moisturizer,
and Jesus is a brand of jeans.”
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Advertising can change cultures
• “In 1980 the Gwich’in tribe of Alaska got television, and
therefore massive advertising, for the first time.”
44 21
Sun Microsystems
• During interviews of job candidates, Nancy
Hauge, Director of human resources at Sun
Microsystems “notes how soon job
candidates laugh.”
44 22
Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations
44 23
The Grouch Patrol
• One branch of Digital Equipment created the
“Grouch Patrol.”
44 24
Humorous Sales
Reinforcement
• The 75-member sales team of IBM’s Inside
Sales Center made a pick-up orchestra, and
recorded their sales in fun ways—by
smashing a gong, or by moving a toy race-
horse around a race track. In the saddles
were pictures of the various sales personnel.
44 27
Admitting Mistakes
• When one business manager made a
really bad mistake, and had to call a
meeting to talk about it, he walked into
the meeting wearing a t-shirt with a
large red bulls-eye in the front.
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Benefits of Humor in the Workplace
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• 3. Because humor is based on enjoying what is
unexpected, humor gets us out of ruts and helps us
think more creatively.
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Examples of Humor in the Workplace
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• The CEO of a large Canadian bank
appears in a monthly corporate video
that is shown to all employees to
discuss recent issues and plans.
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• Just as the California police arrive on
the scene of a family fight, one officer
hears loud noises and screaming. Then
she sees a portable TV set come
crashing through the front window.
• “TV repair.”
(Morreall [2008]: 471)
44 33
Scott Adams’ “Dilbert”
• “‘Dilbert” themes include downsizing, heavy work
loads, micromanagement of budgets, humiliating
small cubicles, the accelerating pace of change,
corporate gobbledegook, management fads, cruel
bosses, annoying colleagues, and red tape.”
44 34
Southwest Airlines
• Herb Kelleher is the CEO of Southwest Airlines.
44 36
Herb Kelleher vs. Kurt
Herwald
• In 1992, the slogan of Southwest
Airlines was “Just Plane Smart.”
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The Arm-Wrestling Match
• Herwald was a beefy 37-year-old weight lifter.
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Kelleher Lost the Match, but…
• The Southwest people were in the stands shouting,
“Herb! Herb! Herb!”
44 39
Herb Kelleher’s Southwest
Airlines
• Southwest employees are encouraged to create a
playful environment.
44 40
Logical Infelicities and
Language Play in Advertising:
• Name Calling
– Ape Lincoln, bleeding heart liberal, male chauvinist pig
• Glittering Generality
– our Christian heritage, unquestioned patriotism, silent
majority
• Plain-Folks Appeal
– kissing babies, eating Polish sausages, fried chicken, or
blintzes
• Stroking (Argument ad Populum)
– you fine people, heartland of America, backbone of America
• Argument ad Hominem
– fanatics, lesbians, Lincoln the baboon
(Cross [2009]: 149-159)
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MORE LOGICAL INFELICITIES:
• Transfer (Guilt or Glory by Association)
– Ku Klux Klan, as American as apple pie
• Bandwagon
– the Pepsi generation, Blings & Icies
• Faulty Cause and Effect
– frisby suck, when I wash my car it rains.
• False Analogy
– Don’t change horses in mid stream.
(Cross [2009]: 149-159)
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STILL MORE LOGICAL INFELICITIES
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!59
Doublespeak & Newspeak
• As chair of the National Council of Teachers of English’s
Committee on Public Doublespeak, William Lutz has been a
watchdog of public officials who use language to “mislead,
distort, deceive, inflate, circumvent, obfuscate.”
44 44
Weasel Words
• Weasel Words—named for the empty eggs that weasels have
sucked the contents out of:
– “Help”
– Virtually Spotless
– New and Improved
– Acts Fast
– Works Like, Works Against, Works Longer
– Like Magic
– Up To
– Twice as Long
(Lutz [2009]: 422-451)
44 45
Misleading Language
• Sissela Bok says that we need to
distinguish between the various ways
there are to mislead people, including
“duplicity, mendacity, deception,
deceit, lying, exaggerations, and
euphemisms.”
(Bok [2009]: 190)
44 46
Defenders of The War in Iraq
• “Defenders of the Bush administration’s war
policies reject all imputations of deceit.
True, some among them acknowledge, their
predictions turned out to be wrong; true,
they may have relied on faulty intelligence or
untrustworthy informants. But they spoke in
error, they insist, never intending to
mislead.”
(Bok [2009]: 196)
44 47
Opponents of the War in Iraq
• “Increasing numbers now question whether
intelligence was simply erroneous or whether it was
twisted, ‘cherry-picked,’ to mislead the public.”
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• “Even among those who hold such sharply
discordant views, however, there are two
areas of agreement. First, most people now
agree that President Bush and other public
officials presented arguments to support
going to war that relied on evidence later
found to be false. Second, most also agree
that the burden of death, disability, and
suffering resulting from the invasion is far
greater than the proponents of going to war
had predicted.”
(Bok [2009]: 197)
44 49
HUMOR IN BUSINESS
• In Humor Works, John Morreall said
that people do their best work when
they have control over their lives and
when they feel they are valued
members of a team.
(Nilsen & Nilsen 57)
44 51
ROBERT FROST
• Robert Frost said, “By
working faithfully eight
hours a day, you may
eventually get to be a boss
and work twelve hours a
day.”
(Nilsen & Nilsen 57-58)
44 52
“SOFT SKILLS”
• C. Thomas Howard, director of the MBA
program at the University of Denver said in a
New York Times interview:
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• The humor in the funny traffic schools is always “on
task.”
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HUMOR IN ADVERTISING
In Funny Business: Humour, Management and Business Culture,
Jean-Louis Barsoux said that there are similarities between
good humor and good advertising copy:
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A HUMOROUS AD
• Volkswagon successfully introduced the VW Rabbit
into the United States with a 10-second commercial.
44 57
44 58
!THE LAWS OF BUSINESS
• MURPHY’S LAW: “If anything can go wrong, it will,”
extended to “When left to themselves, things always
go from bad to worse,” and “If anything can go
wrong, it will, and even if it can’t it might.”
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• !!THE PETER PRINCIPLE: “Each employee tends to
rise to their level of incompetence.”
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!!!THE FINAL RULES OF
BUSINESS
• RULE NUMBER 1: “The boss is always
right.”
44 61
Business Humor Web Sites
ADBUSTERS’ SPOOF ADS:
https://www.adbusters.org/gallery/spoofads
CHEERS:
http://www.tv.com/cheers/show/66/summary.html
DILBERT:
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/
44 62
DIRECT TV AD (CHRIS FARLEY & DAVID SPADE):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvyZC5Wajj0
FRASIER:
http://www.tv.com/frasier/show/70/summary.html
HOME IMPROVEMENT:
http://www.tv.com/home-improvement/show/635/summary.html
HUMOR AT WORK (CLYDE FAHLMAN):
http://home.teleport.com/~laff9to5/index.html
THE OFFICE:
http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/
44 64
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44 65
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44 67
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44 68
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44 70
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44 71
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44 72
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44 73
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44 74
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44 75
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